


Fieldtrip

by Chellodello



Series: Levi is a Questionable Grief Counselor [3]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Canon Universe, Connie and Levi being bros, Gen, Humor, M/M, Manga Spoilers, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-07
Updated: 2014-05-22
Packaged: 2017-12-31 19:39:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1035612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chellodello/pseuds/Chellodello
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Connie wants to talk about Levi's 'feelings'. Levi does not.<br/>Or;<br/>The trip back to the hideout is going to be a long one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“Sooooooo, Heichou......” Connie trails off not knowing exactly what to say. It’s been a long two hours on horseback and with two more ahead of them he has to fill the silence up somehow or he’s going to go crazy.

“So Connie.” Is the only response he gets out of the man.

He doesn’t know why he though this would be easy. Eren did say that once you got Levi talking he was a chatterbox, it was just a matter of getting to a topic he felt compelled to talk about. Which was harder than he had expected. He has a brief moment of brilliance thought and grins. 

“You and Eren seem pretty clo—“

“No.” is the immediate shut down.

“Oh come on, who am I going to tell sir?”

Connie realizes too late that he has hit a nerve and Levi fixes him with a no-nonsense stare. Not for the first time Connie wonders how Eren managed to put up with the lance corporal creeping on him all the time. It wierded him out after a few hours, he can't imagine being glued to his side day in and day out.  “Let me stop you right there. That conversation, the one you are stupidly trying to bring up, is not going to happen.”

“But I—“

"No."

"Maybe later then?"

“Not now, not with you, not with him, not on a boat, not in a coat. Not ever if I can help it.”

“I ju—“

“ **Never** Springer."

Connie sulks in his saddle. Buzzkill.

Almost as if he has read his mind the corporal brings his horse closer so that Connie can hear his next statement clear as day. "And if you value your dick being connected to your scrawny ass body and  _not_  being fed to wild dogs then you’ll quit while you’re ahead.” Levi says as plainly as if they had been discussing the weather.

Connie pales. The image of his good stuff being ripped to shreds before he ever got a chance to properly use it flashes in horriblely vivid detail before his eyes. He has no doubt Levi would do it too. The teenager gulps audibly and faces forward, looking out at the vast nothingness. “Understood sir.”

“Good.”

…….

……..

……

“Sooooooo on a scale of one to ten how much do you like poop jokes?”

Levi groans, it’s going to be a loooong trip.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What was the worst thing that could happen from telling Connie about his past?  
> or;  
> Levi and Connie play emotional i-spy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I said to myself, _Shelby_ , how can I possibly manage to not update Aromatherapy for even longer while simultaneously updating a story nobody wanted a sequel to? 
> 
> This is the answer to this question.

Levi learns pretty quickly that Connie Springer isn’t exactly the sharpest blade in the bundle and perhaps this is why he decides to indulge his need for entertainment 3 hours into their, seemingly endless, trip to the hideout.

_(That's not the reason: he knows it. The real reason is that this kid discovered his mother and everyone he’d grown up with had been turned into monsters and that they were most likely being killed this very minute. Levi might draw the line at talking about his feelings, but he can afford the short boy this small distraction.)_

The game is a simple back and forth; ten questions based of what they see around them with ten truths. It’s hardly a game really, more like emotional i-spy than anything. That being said it didn’t mean he was going to make it easy. He had a dark and mysterious image to hold onto after all.

The bald boy is blissfully silent for a few minutes as he tries to come up with a question born of their surroundings. Finally he blurts out “How old are you heichou?”

The short man levels him with a blank stare, reminding the soldier with his silent judgment that he has to relate the question to their surroundings. In response Connie points to a young fawn walking the in the distance with its mother. It couldn’t have been more than a few days old.

“Thats a weak connection and you know it.”

“But it is a connection!”

Meh, barely. Levi only half answers his question. “How old do you think I am?”

Connie groans, obviously tired of having his questions backfire on him, and rubs a hand down his face in frustration. The corporal tries very hard to not think about the germs he’s just left there. Results are mixed. “I don’t know sir,  you have one of those faces that could easily be 16 or 35?”

Levi is choosing to take that as a compliment. “Close Springer. My turn.”

He looks like he wants to argue but thinks better of it and just slumps in his saddle. “Lame.”

Levi doesn’t really care all that much about any of these trivial questions, he knows all the basics about his new team from reading their enlistment papers and training reports as well as a fair amount of inconsequential details that Eren has dropped here and there. He’d much rather make the trip in silence but apparently there was something about him that made the 104th want to have a heart-to-heart with him at every available opportunity.

It had to be in something they were eating because this was getting ridiculous.

Levi points out a formation of birds in the distance flying over the boundaries of the wall. “Why the scouts? You could have been in the MP with your ranking. Why leave the walls at all?” It’s a question he’s been curious about even before he met them. The incident had caused a bit of an uproar among ranking officers of all the branches when 4/5ths of the top 10 had forgone the military police to seemingly throw their lives away in the scouting legion; an unheard of feat.

“ _Because I’m an idiot_.” Connie mutters under his breath but Levi hears it anyways. He doesn’t smile but it’s close. “To be honest heichou I was pretty much set on joining the MP but then I fell victim to one of Eren’s dumb speeches.”

The black haired man snorts. “That sounds about right.”

Connie scratches the back of his head and looks sheepish, as if going to great lengths to appear like he was embarrassed to have been swayed by Eren’s big mouth, but it's obvious by his body language alone that he wasn’t: relaxed shoulders, easy breathing, and the fact that he didn’t seem to care that he kept scratching his ass every ten seconds.

“Yeah, the night of graduation everyone was really tense and Eren just- well you know how Eren can be-  going on and on about fighting to live and stuff.” Boy did he ever. “I guess he just got to me, a lot of us actually. I mean I’m probably going to die horribly in whatever branch I’d have picked but I’d much rather die having been outside the walls a few times, you know?”

A warm feeling of pride bubbles up in his chest and for a moment he thinks that maybe its just gas because he really has no reason to be proud of Connie or Eren or any of them for decisions they made before he met them. But he can’t deny that he is proud of them.

How annoying.

“What is up with that?” Levi grumbles and at Connie’s strange look he fixes his eyes ahead of them. “Your turn brat.”

He vows to be honest on this next round, even if he asks another question without relating it to their surroundings. A token of good faith if you will.

“How about your last name? I’ve never heard it, none of us have actually.”

Of course.

Of fucking course.

 _‘You’ve got to be fucking shitting me.’_  This is what he gets for trying to be nice.  For a moment Levi is going to go back on his vow because, hey he’s broken enough by now: _I’m going to kill Erwin, no really I am. Yeah sure I’ll keep Eren safe, no problem. In no way will I let him become a threat to the military police. I would never hide him from them either; who do you take me for?_ What’s a few more bold faced lies between commander and underling?

But that annoyingly tight feeling is bubbling in his chest again and this time it tastes like guilt and not gas.

Levi had vowed that there would be no secrets between him and his new squad. If there was any chance of this whole convoluted plan working out, and by working out Levi means not getting them all hung in the capitol plaza if at all possible, then they were going to have to lay all their cards on the table.

And what was the worst that could happen from telling them about his past? _Levi plans to get these words on his tombstone at this point._ Besides, knowing the cluster fuck that was brewing in the capitol it was probably going to come out in the proverbial wash sooner rather than later. Better get this stuff over with now on his terms before it turned into some dramatic _thing_ later on. 

Levi hates when stuff became _things_. “Okay I’ll bite.”

Connie giggles, actually giggles, and excitedly steers his horse close as if he'd miss hearing it if they weren’t trotting side by side. Levi has never seen him look so intent on anything before. ‘ _Maybe telling Connie first wasn’t the best idea…’_

“It’s Ackerman. Levi Ackerman.” Too late, word vomit.

The bald solider freezes up so quickly that it causes his horse to come to a screeching halt.

‘ _Sweet Maria grant me strength._ ’ Levi considers leaving him there and it takes a lot of self-restraint to circle his horse back around. “But sir, that Mikasa’s last name!”

Levi fights the urge to trample him. “What a brilliant observationalist you are Springer, no wonder you were top of your class.” 

Connie is undeterred by his commanding officer’s irritation;  he’s probably too busy standing there with his mouth open wide enough to attract flies to notice he was insulting him. “But- that would make you-”

“-Cousins.” Well sorta. He isn’t sure if being the weird street kid adopted solely for the purpose of going on murder vacations really made him a part of the family but he’s going to keep that to himself for now.

“But she hates you!”

No shit. “Nothing gets past you does it?”

“But aren’t you and Eren-”

He regrets telling him already. “ _Still_ not talking about it.” The web of his personal life was incredibly tangled even without adding Eren and his stupid _–precious, adorable, perfect-_ face into the mix.

“But doesn’t that make it-”

“A pain in the ass?” Bad choice of words on his part; not to mention woefully in the realm of imagination at this point.

“Like literally or….?”

Even Levi has to admit that he walked right into that one. “Watch it.”

Connie is squinting his eyes and pursing his lips which either means he isthinking very hard or fighting the urge to take a shit. Levi hopes it’s the former. The short man is no stranger to awkward moments, in fact his entire life since taking charge of Eren has been nothing but a nonstop-waterwheel of awkward moments, but this staring was getting uncomfortable even for him. “What?” the corporal snaps.

After several moments of intense staring and/or constipation Connie throws his head back and laughs loudly to the sky. Levi is certain that the emotional strain of the last few days have finally caused the bald kid to crack because he’s clutching his sides and laughing so hard that he’s crying.

Wow, rude.

“Thats a good one heichou! You and Mikasa being cousins, that’s good, really really good. Aw man you had me there for a second.” He wipes his tears on the back of his hand and grins widely at him. “Eren was right; you really are funny when people get to know you.”

The literal one time he decides to be honest about his ‘sorrid thug past’ and he thinks that he’s joking. And what the hell Eren? No wonder the 104th kept coming to him looking for guidance; that green-eye’d little shit was telling them he was passing out emotional pick-me-ups like they were candy. He’s just as much annoyed as he is strangely touched.

Levi adds this feeling to the ever expanding list of ‘things he doesn’t want to think about now or ever’ and moves on.

Fine: No emotional baggage containing secrets for the 104th.

“......Yeah thats me and my adorable sense of humor for you, never ending shits and giggles.” While he’s at it no more inspirational fieldtrips, and no more mister-nice-heichou. Levi squares his shoulders and he thinks he can see their hideout as a bump on the horizon. The sooner they get there the sooner he could hose the place down and go to sleep. Maybe if he’s lucky Eren will already have the cottage cleaned to his standards.

Unlikely, but a man could dare to dream. “I’m tired of looking at your face, lets hurry up.”

Laughing again, Connie points at himself. “Don’t you want to know by real name too? It’s only fair.”

“Not particularly, _Conrad_.”

“Boooo.” He doesn’t argue but settles for sticking out his tongue at his commanding officer and drapes himself over his saddle sullenly.

“Do that again I’m cutting it off feeding it to you.” Levi is actually joking this time but Connie can’t tell and nods with the utmost serious expression on his face.

“Understood sir!”

Levi really really isn’t paid enough for this job.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FYI; Connie's full name is Conrad Elizabeth Springer.

**Author's Note:**

> Except they spend the next two hours talking about shit puns so its all okay. The idea of levi kinda quote Dr. Suess/Sam-I-Am makes me giggle like crazy, so you got that thrown in there for good measure. Chapter 51 upset me, but man the image of them on a zuko!esque life changing field trip to the hideout made it almost okay.


End file.
